


The Garden in the Kitchen

by notjodieyet



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: (i guess? it's like fluff-with-feelings), F/F, Fluff, Other, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:40:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25829809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notjodieyet/pseuds/notjodieyet
Summary: The TARDIS decides to rewire time. The Doctor does what she can to fix it. Fortunately, the TARDIS probably just wants the Doctor to do something.Unfortunately, that something is exactly what the Doctor is extremely bad at: vulnerability.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Missy
Comments: 13
Kudos: 31





	The Garden in the Kitchen

There was that scent in the air that meant the TARDIS was going to start acting up, and the Doctor had been waiting all day for it to make its move. She was currently crouched inside the TARDIS console — had opened a panel and crawled inside, just to check — and was unscrewing a secondary panel. Just to check. 

When the TARDIS decided to start acting up it was nearly impossible to dissuade. Once it decided to turn all the water purple. That was fairly harmless. Once it decided to shrink all the Doctor’s clothes five sizes, and then break the shower, which was relatively harmless but very inconvenient. 

Today was going to be something bigger. It just smelled like it. Like burnt vegetables and lemons and smoke in the back of the Doctor’s throat. The TARDIS wanted something, bad, and it was going to stop at nothing to obtain whatever it was. 

The Doctor finished unscrewing the last corner of the panel and flipped it open. Pulsing red guts lay below, which was _definitely_ not supposed to happen. The Doctor frowned and poked the guts. A bit came away with her finger. The Doctor, against all common sense, licked it: it tasted like Jell-O.

This wasn’t the TARDIS’s final move, she knew. It was only another indicator of something. 

The Doctor knew she wasn’t going to achieve anything else by sitting down here, and besides, all of her muscles were beginning to ache, so she crawled out backwards and secured the bridge closed. She chewed her lip. “Hm,” she said to the TARDIS. “What do you want, old girl?”

The TARDIS, which was usually very talkative when they were on their own, remained stubbornly silent.

It smelled like apricot now. The TARDIS almost never smelled like apricot.

“What is it,” groaned the Doctor, flopping on her back to see Missy towering above her in all her awful purple glory. (That explained the TARDIS’s refusal to talk, anyway. It didn’t like Missy very much). “If it’s the fish in the toilet on the second floor I _know_ about those, but they just kept reappearing when I tried to move them and the toilet won’t flush. You’ve got to just use a different toilet.”

Missy blinked. “Fish?” She offered a manicured hand in the Doctor’s direction. The Doctor took it, and heaved herself up. She brushed the TARDIS-dust off her front. “No. I wanted to know about the garden in my kitchen.” Missy looked away, and then back towards the Doctor. “ _Fish_?” she said again.

The TARDIS had never grown a garden in the kitchen. The Doctor bounced thinking of it. “What’s it growing? Is there basil? We’re out of basil, you know. Wait, no, wait, I’m going to go see on my own. Which kitchen?”

“Tomatoes, mostly. The door won’t open anymore.” Missy made a face like she’d tried to open the door before going to the Doctor. “You’re welcome to try, of course.”

 _A garden in the kitchen._ The Doctor had a feeling that wasn’t it, either. Another symptom. 

“I dunno,” said the Doctor. “Anything else you’ve noticed?”

“No,” said Missy, petulantly. “I’m going to get breakfast.”

“All right.” 

And then the world went wrong.

The Doctor had a distinct feeling that there was a _happening_ right now, and it was about to be over, or perhaps it was already over and she was still stuck in the middle (that sort of thing happened to Time Lords sometimes). It was a lemony happening. The Doctor thought she was going to be sick.

* * *

The TARDIS put itself to rights again. Missy was still standing there. “No,” she said. “I wanted to know about the garden in my kitchen.”

“You’ve said that,” said the Doctor. “You’ve just —”

She almost tumbled over as the TARDIS did the thing again, the _happening happened_. It was still lemony. The Doctor tried to seize on the moment, catch it to examine it and find out what went wrong, but it was over before she could do anything.

* * *

Missy was in front of her. “No. I wanted to know about the garden in my kitchen.”

The Doctor was careful not to say anything, for fear of setting off the TARDIS again, and instead she crept around Missy, walking a possessive circle around the woman. (No. It wasn’t much of a circle. More of an oblong, really). 

She saw nothing wrong, although a single strand hair had fallen out of place on Missy’s carefully styled head. The Doctor reached out to run a fingertip across the fabric on Missy’s arm. “I wonder,” she said aloud, and the TARDIS reset itself. 

* * *

“No. I wanted to know about the garden in my kitchen.”

The Doctor held up a finger and thought. Time loop, that was for certain; the TARDIS was twisting around the temporal flow in its pocked dimension. It was quite possible that the anomaly only affected Missy and the Doctor. Its trigger seemed to be the Doctor speaking aloud, and its reset point seemed to be Missy’s complaint about the kitchen.

There were a few possible ways to get out of the loop. The Doctor could figure out what the TARDIS wanted and fulfill those standards, and then, _hopefully_ , it would stop messing with them. They could exit the pocket dimension and rid themselves of the TARDIS’s hold on their personal time-streams. The Doctor could restart the TARDIS’s temporal settings altogether, although that was really a last resort, since she wasn’t sure if she could do that anymore and it would clear the TARDIS’s memory completely. 

The former was her best bet.

Missy arched a delicate eyebrow. “I said, there’s a _garden_ in my _kitchen._ ”

The Doctor nodded. Notebook! She needed a notebook. She dove down and snatched one out of her toolkit, along with a pink pen, and clicked the nib of the pen out.

_TARDIS mad. Time loop._

“Time… loop,” repeated Missy. She sighed. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to play along. When did this time loop start?”

_Garden thing._

“And? What makes it go?” Missy looked at the Doctor’s notepad, and then the Doctor’s pen, and then at the TARDIS at large. “Ah. Well, I _am_ more than just a pretty face. Don’t you forget it.”

The Doctor glared.

“Why don’t you just…” Missy tapped her temple.

Heat rose to the Doctor’s cheeks. She scribbled down a few more words in the notepad: _Out of practice. Might start the loop up_. 

“It’s worth a try,” said Missy. _“How’s this,”_ she added, in the Doctor’s head.

The Doctor squirmed. It felt incredibly invasive to have Missy, of all people, prodding around her mind, although there wasn’t much choice otherwise. And it was better than anybody else prodding around in her mind. At least the discomfort was a familiar one. _“I don’t know,”_ said the Doctor, telepathically.

The TARDIS rebooted time.

* * *

“No. I wanted to know about the garden in my kitchen,” said Missy, for the fifth time. It was uncanny to hear her say the same words in the same rhythm again and again and again. The Doctor had the feeling of being trapped in a very personal, very small haunted house.

She found the notepad and pen again, and wrote: _Can’t talk TARDIS time loop._

“Oh,” said Missy. “That’s why I felt off.”

_You can feel it too?_

Missy shrugged slightly. “I presume we’ve tried talking… in our heads?” The Doctor nodded. “Yes. All right. Well,” she said, gleefully, “You’ll just have to shut up until we figure this out.”

_That’s the plan._

“It’s wonderfully silent in here. Perhaps I won’t do anything to help you for a long while yet.”

“No!” blurted the Doctor, and just barely managed a loud _FUCK_ before —

* * *

“No. I wanted to know about the garden in my kitchen.” Missy looked expectant, like she had the times before and before and before. The Doctor considered tearing her hair out.

 _TIME LOOP,_ she wrote across her notepad. _NO TALK._

“How many times,” said Missy, obviously noticing the frantic anger in the Doctor’s gestures. 

_5 loops. 6 times you’ve complained about the garden._

“Oh.” Missy looked around the TARDIS. “And? What does it want? The TARDIS, I mean, because obviously it’s being difficult.”

_If I knew. Do you think. We would still be doing this._

“I suppose not. You do love your talking.”

The Doctor stomped, upset. _Can you just cooperate for once in your life please._

Missy smirked. “No,” she said. “You know me better than this. We could always speak through telepathy, you know. Although I must have suggested that before.”

_Every time._

“It’s a good idea,” said Missy, defensively. “All right. Well. Why does it usually do this?”

The Doctor considered that. _When it’s proving a point,_ she wrote. It had gotten upset when the Doctor had told the Master countless hurtful things, and made her apologize. It had gotten upset when the Doctor refused to let her guard down around Rose. It had gotten upset when the Doctor had said something like, “I don’t care leave if you want to” to Clara last year. 

(There was a point to be made about the Doctor’s vulnerability, but due to the pure nature of the thing, the Doctor refused to acknowledge it.)

“I think it has to do with me,” said Missy. 

_Of course you do._

“It’s hinged around me, isn’t it?”

The Doctor didn’t know how to reply to that. _I guess,_ she wrote finally. _That doesn’t mean anything, though._

“Doesn’t it?”

Missy was right, loathe as she was to admit it. There was something about _Missy_ that the TARDIS wanted.

“Oh,” said the Doctor, without thinking.

* * *

“No. I wanted to know about the garden in my kitchen.” 

Last time had been the longest before a restart, if the Doctor’s sense of time was right, although it was hard to keep one’s sense of time about one if time itself kept deciding it wanted to play again. The Doctor wrote down an explanation and showed it to Missy.

“Typical,” said Missy. “You’ve done this on purpose, haven’t you?”

_What??_

“You must be mad at me for something. Isn’t that why you got up so early? So you didn’t have to —” The word that hung in the air, unspoken, was _cuddle._ Neither of them wanted to think about that. “Stay with me?”

_No. That wasn’t it._

“Then what was it?”

_I was busy._

“Busy with what?” Missy planted a hand on her hip and met the Doctor’s eyes with her electric-blue gaze. “You’re sick of me. Just like you grow sick of everyone else.”

 _That’s not true and you know it._ The Doctor’s handwriting slanted as she grew more and more annoyed and panicked. _I’m not sick of you._

“Fine. I don’t care. I’m sick of you, too.”

“Fuck,” said the Doctor, on purpose.

* * *

Possibly the Doctor was imagining it, but Missy looked angrier this time. “No. I wanted to know about the garden in my kitchen.” 

The Doctor didn’t bother with an explanation. “I’m not sick of you really, I’m not, I —”

* * *

“No. I wanted to know about the garden in my kitchen.” 

The Doctor screamed.

* * *

“No. I wanted to know about the garden in my kitchen.”

The Doctor thought that she’d been onto something, with her sloppy, uncomfortable emotions last time. Something like that.

 _Hi,_ she wrote on the notepad. _I think I’m meant to apologize but I don’t know for what._

“Why are you doing that?”

 _Time loop. Doesn’t matter. What did I do wrong?_ The Doctor looked at Missy’s face. It betrayed nothing useful. She felt gross and naked.

“Nothing,” said Missy. “I mean, nothing in terms of _you_.”

_So something._

“No.” The word was curt. Could a single word be short? Missy’s “no” certainly seemed that way. “Nothing. This is just a short circuit, I’m sure, we’ll be back in no time.”

“I love you,” said the Doctor, tears stuck in her throat. “I love you.”

* * *

“No. I wanted to know about the garden in my kitchen.”

The Doctor had been so sure that was what the TARDIS had wanted. She wrote, best as she could remember, her explanation from Loop #6. 

Missy licked her bright red lips. “Do you think maybe I shouldn’t be so concerned about the garden, considering that time is literally stuck?”

_I think probably yes._

“Oh. There’s tomatoes.”

_I know._

“How many times have I told you about the tomatoes?”

_Only twice._

“Have you tried anything to stop this?”

The Doctor refused to answer that, because it was a stupid question.

“Of course. And you haven’t considered that _maybe_ this is because you’ve been particularly…” Missy looked like she was searching for the right word. “Distant, as of late?”

_Is this because I got up early?_

“Maybe.”

_I didn’t mean anything by it. I wanted to stay in. I had things to do. Experiment things._

“Ah.”

 _I._ The Doctor didn’t want to write the rest of it. She’d tried that and it hadn’t worked at all. But maybe… maybe _this_ time, something would happen. Maybe this time it would work. _I love you,_ she wrote, on a whim.

“Lovely,” said Missy, and then quickly, “Oh, the feeling’s mutual. I mean, samesies. I mean…” 

The Doctor dropped her notepad, stepped forward, and kissed Missy on the mouth.

“You’re meant to say,” said the Doctor. “ _I love you too._ ”

And…

And nothing happened. Time stayed put. The TARDIS seemed as happy as it ever got, with its quiet beeping and low whirring that sounded like a heartbeat. Missy smiled at the Doctor and the Doctor smiled back.

“I love you too,” said Missy.

The Doctor kissed her again. 


End file.
